NBA Insider: Could LeBron James steal away with league's top defensive award?

Tracy Boulian/The Plain DealerAs the New York Knicks found out last week, LeBron James' growth as a defensive player is no fluke. Cavaliers forward Ben Wallace believes James can win Defensive Player of the Year honors -- perhaps multiple times.

CLEVELAND -- There's a good chance LeBron James will claim his first Most Valuable Player award this season.

Winning that honor is no doubt an extreme accomplishment, but it may not be the only individual trophy James will be chasing during his career. As he has matured over the last two seasons, he's continued to become more of a force at the defensive end and now some are wondering whether he could ever get his hands on a Defensive Player of the Year Award.

"There's no doubt he can," said Blazers coach Nate McMillan, who worked on James with his defense over the last three summers with Team USA. "He's as quick and as strong as anyone at his position, he's going to have to continue to work at it but he has the ability to be the best."

Last season, James started picking it up on defense and using his size and speed as a late-game weapon. For the first time he got a couple All-Defensive Team votes from the league's coaches. Now, he appears to be a lock to be a first teamer this season because he's been excelling for entire games.

Thursday's win over the Blazers was an example. In the fourth quarter, he switched onto Travis Outlaw after he made five consecutive shots. With James on him, Outlaw missed his last four shots including a 3-pointer that James blocked.

Last week in Sacramento, James came up with a steal with less than 30 seconds to tie the game and then blocked Kings star Kevin Martin on the final play of regulation to force overtime. In overtime, when the Kings had a chance to tie at the end, coach Kenny Natt didn't call a play for Martin because he didn't think he could get the shot off against James.

Charles Rex Arbogast/Associated Press"He's got the tools to do whatever he wants to on defense," says Ben Wallace on James (here blocking a shot by Chicago's Ty Thomas).

These are just two instances of what has been a season-long defensive clinic put on by James, who holds the rare honor of leading his team in total blocks and steals.

"If he wants to be the Defensive Player of the Year he can be," said teammate Ben Wallace, who has four such trophies. "He's got the tools to do whatever he wants to on defense. He's stepping up and he wants to guard the best player on the floor or the hottest player on the floor and you rarely see that from a guard."

James credits his increased attention to defense to the chase for a title. After the 2007 Finals sweep, James focused on improving his entire game. It was magnified with Team USA, which committed to winning Olympic gold with defense. James was at the heart of it.

"The last two summers he totally dominated the Olympic team," McMillan said. "We had a lot of guys who were great on that team but he was the quarterback of our defense. He guarded the power forward so he could see the floor, Coach [Mike Krzyzewski] was always talking about his voice on defense."

"It is a process for great players," McMillan said. "The first few years in the league he tried to establish himself offensively. Now he's more comfortable with his offense and he's committed to adding defense. Now he's showing that he can dominate both ends of the floor."

Around The Association

Ref matters: There's some change coming to the NBA officiating ranks and it is pretty clear coaches are smelling blood in the water.

Peter Cosgrove/Associated PressDoc Rivers and other NBA coaches are a little more confrontational with officials such as Dick Bavetta this season. There are signs that the league may be preparing to address some long-standing concerns with some of its referees.

BY THE NUMBERS2-11: Detroit Pistons' record on Sundays.2: Times in the last 12 seasons the Celtics have played at home on St. Patrick's Day. This year they played in Chicago, where the Chicago River was dyed green and the Bulls beat Boston wearing all-green uniforms.132: Seconds into a game in Orlando last week that Utah Jazz coach Jerry Sloan was ejected. It was probably one of the fastest ejections in NBA history, though no official records are kept.-- Brian Windhorst

At the start of the season, the league released a report from attorney Lawrence Pedowitz describing how officials and the system can operate better in the wake of the Tim Donaghy scandal. Some of the suggested measures can't be put in place properly until next year but the report was hard on several current officials, especially veteran Dick Bavetta. It specifically implied some officials let relationships with certain players and teams affect their jobs.

Perhaps as a result, coaches have been all over officials this season, on the court and in the media. Often they have suggested bias against certain players or teams. While some of this is standard, there's undoubtedly been an extra edge this season.

In 2007-08, head coaches and assistants were hit with 172 technical fouls. This year the number was already 170 at the start of last week and now has already soared past last season's total. The Hawks' Mike Woodson was ejected Saturday at The Q, for example. He was the third coach ejected this week with those technicals not yet computed in the season's number.

The league has tried to keep control by handing out fines for coaches' public complaints, hitting the Celtics' Doc Rivers with a second fine last week. Cavs coach Mike Brown got a $25,000 fine earlier this season for hinting at a bias in the officiating of Joey Crawford. Recently, Bobcats coach Larry Brown said he felt the league's officials were biased against his team and it was holding them back.

Also this week, the league took the unusual step of fining official Bill Kennedy for his behavior in ejecting Rivers from a game in Chicago when Rivers said Kennedy goaded him. The public announcement of the fine was also interesting.

All of it has fed speculation that not only will there be some new policies installed for next season but that some officials, even high profile ones, will retire or be asked to leave. Don't think the coaches don't know it and they are getting rather liberal because of it.

CBA Round 1: Let's get ready to rumble.

Commissioner David Stern told ESPN.com this week that he and union chief Billy Hunter have agreed to begin "substantive discussions" about a new collective bargaining agreement before the end of the season. Talking this serious this early is somewhat irregular and it will be interesting to see how it plays out.

Hunter and Stern want to send the message that they are willing to work together to discuss changes to the agreement, which ends in 2011. Yet with the economy, it is very clear the owners want concessions and the last time they were in this mood they locked the players out in 1998. Hunter ended up getting hammered by Stern overall, though some of his successes have made lots of money over the last 11 years for mid-level players.

This time it will bear watching whether the players will look for a better deal before they start losing paychecks, because it sounds like the owners aren't afraid to show their resolve again. It already sounds like some in the union know they'll be giving up ground, which will only strengthen Stern's position.

Pistons center Rasheed Wallace, a free agent this summer, is saying what many of his peers must be thinking. The cash flow is going to be restricted. The NBA has projected the salary cap will shrink more than $1 million this year and recede further in 2010.

"It's going to change a whole way of living for some guys, having to take those pay cuts," Wallace said. "It's a bad free-agent year for us. Guys who were able to get that big money contract the last couple of years, kudos for them. Myself and other free agents included, talking about signing for next season or the year after that, it's going to hit us hard. Definitely we're not going to get the money that some guys think they should get and deserve. But that's all part of it."

Don't feel bad, Wallace has made nearly $200 million in his career.

Choppy Laker waters: The Lakers have been struggling a bit lately after playing a great month following the injury to Andrew Bynum, having given up the best record in the NBA to the Cavs. The team leaders -- namely coach Phil Jackson and captain Derek Fisher -- are now openly saying they think some players are not always putting the team first.

"You can see that as a group, we've been frustrated at times," Fisher said. "This is real. It's not a soap opera. When you're part of a group and part of a team, I think you have to respect the fact that guys are going to have different, I don't want to say agendas, but just different things that they go through at times that it's tough to keep things perfectly balanced the way you need to for that many games in a season."

Jackson said the team has been missing its "killer instinct" -- especially from role players who aren't perhaps playing with the same fire they did earlier in the season. Sasha Vujacic and Jordan Farmar have been unhappy with playing time and shots at times this season.

"There's some players on this team -- I always like this word -- that are disgruntled," Jackson said. "We do have some 'disgruntledness' on our team and that's because their own personal game isn't going well. They've got to break out of that."

The Lakers start a seven-game road trip this week and in the past have been able to smooth troubles out on the road.

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